Legacy Food Storage has been around since 2011, making it one of the oldest emergency food brands. They advertise themselves as the “best value for your money” per pound of food companies, “best tasting,” and having one of the largest serving sizes.
Let’s take a deeper look into Legacy Food Storage to see if they really live up to their claims
Legacy Food Storage – Our Ratings
What We Think
Legacy Food Storage has a large selection of emergency foods and kits with long shelf lives and reliable packaging. The brand is very transparent about serving sizes and how many calories are in each kit.
Our main gripe is that LFS meals are mostly just carbs slathered in a lot of cheese sauce. There are tons of artificial ingredients and way too much sodium. We wouldn’t want to eat just these meals for an extended period!
Legacy does have a good selection of bulk freeze-dried ingredients, though. If you care about nutrition, you’ll want to add some of these ingredients to the meals to improve the nutrition profile.
The price makes Legacy Food Storage kits a good option for getting prepped quickly. Just make sure you have a stove and enough fuel in your supplies because these meals require cooking!
Key Takeaways
- Lots of long-term kits and bulk ingredients
- Good value if you want to build your stockpile quickly
- Poor nutrition and very high sodium
- 25-year shelf life
- Very reliable packaging
- Most meals require lengthy cooking
What Types of Survival Food Does Legacy Food Storage Offer?
Legacy Food Storage has a lot of options when it comes to emergency foods. They can be broken down into:
- Long-term kits
- Bulk ingredients
- Samples
1. Long-Term Food Kits (32 to 4,320 servings)
This is the main thing that Legacy Food Storage offers: freeze-dried meals packaged in Mylar bags and then put in stackable buckets.
The smallest kit you can get has 32 servings. The largest kit has 4,320 servings of food. There are several types of kits available:
- Breakfast and entree
- Breakfast-only
- Entree-only
- Gluten free
Each kit contains a variety of meals. Legacy also clearly lists how many calories each kit contains.
No Kits By Days
Because serving size is so confusing, many emergency food companies have started selling long-term kits by number of days. For example, you can buy 30-day kits from ReadyWise and Valley Food Storage. These kits calculate the calories for you, typically providing 1,700 to 2,000 calories per day.
Legacy Food Storage currently does NOT have any kits by day. This means it’s up to you to figure out how many days their kits will last you.
This shouldn’t be too difficult since the kits clearly list how many calories they contain. For example, the 720 serving kit contains 287,760 calories. If you need 2,000 calories daily, you can calculate that it will last 143 days.
2. Bulk Ingredients
Legacy Food Storage has an excellent selection of bulk ingredients. You can add these ingredients to their meals or use them to make your own emergency meals. The bulk ingredients are packaged in Mylar bags, and most have a shelf life of 25 years.
The selection isn’t too large, but they have some cool things that most other emergency food brands don’t – such as peanut butter powder and coffee.
Current Bulk Food Options:
- Freeze-dried fruits: strawberries, peaches, pineapple, apples, blueberries
- Freeze-dried veggies: onion, green beans, broccoli, carrots
- Freeze-dried meat: chicken, beef
- Sides: eggs, cheese, peanut butter powder, rice, mashed potatoes, refried beans
- Other: Coffee, raw honey
Legacy sells these bulk ingredients as individual pouches and in variety kits. However, Legacy doesn’t sell individual pouches of their meals. So, if you like one of Legacy’s meals, there’s no way to buy just that meal.
Check bulk ingredients on Legacy
3. Samples
“Samples” is what Legacy Food Storage calls their small variety kits of individual pouches. The samplers are an excellent way to test Legacy’s foods before investing in large kits. However, the cost per serving isn’t as reasonable as buying a kit.
Legacy Food Storage Serving Sizes
LFS advertises itself as having one of the largest serving sizes of any emergency food brand. While this is true*, it doesn’t mean a single serving will fill you up.
On average, LFS meals have:
- Breakfasts: 437 calories
- Entrees: 388 calories
Keep this in mind when buying a kit from Legacy Food Storage. You’ll want to look at the number of calories in the kit, not just the number of servings.
*For comparison, Mountain House meals have an average of 255 calories per serving. ReadyWise meals have just 150-280 calories per serving.
Key Criteria and Our Ratings
Let’s see if Legacy Food Storage meals are everything they claim to be.
Range of Meals
Primal Rating: 
Legacy Food Storage has an okay range of meals. There are 12 different entrees, and all of the kits include a variety of them, so you won’t be stuck eating the same thing every day.
I’m pretty disappointed with their range of breakfasts. There are just 4 options, and there is no savory option (though almost no emergency food brand offers any savory breakfast option). You can buy freeze-dried egg as part of their samplers, though.
Entrees:
- Italian pasta with marinara
- Pasta Alfredo
- Pasta Primavera
- Stroganoff
- Vegetable and rotini pasta
- Macaroni and cheese
- Enchilada, beans and rice
- Creamy a la king (rice)
- Cheese and broccoli bake (potatoes)
- Potato soup mix
- Classic chili mix
- White bean chili mix
Breakfasts:
- Nine grain cereal mix
- Maple oatmeal with brown sugar
- Strawberry creamy wheat
- Old fashioned pancake mix
Quality and Taste
Primal Rating:
When it comes to quality, Legacy Food Storage meals are disappointing. None of the meals contain meat, and many don’t even have vegetables. There are lots of preservatives and weird-sounding ingredients.
As for taste, LFS meals aren’t too bad. It’s kind of hard to go wrong with carbs slathered in cheese or cream sauce! While far from “natural,” yeast extract does wonders for the taste.
However, there are almost no seasonings in LFS meals, so they are pretty bland (we recommend stockpiling spices!). Also, most meals have a similar texture. Adding some freeze-dried vegetables or meat to the meals would improve the texture.
Ease of Cooking
Primal Rating:
In an emergency, you might be unable to cook (such as if a gas leak happens after an earthquake). Even when cooking is safe, you might need to conserve fuel.
Because of this, it is very disappointing that Legacy Food Storage meals require cooking. Many of them even need to be cooked for 15 minutes!
I’ve found that there are some exceptions to this, though. Their bean and potato-based meals can be made with the “soak” method: just pour water over it and wait. Yet, the instructions still claim that you need to cook the meals.
Also read: How to Cook without Electricity
Special Diet Options
Primal Rating:
All Legacy Food Storage meals are vegetarian and soy-free. Six of their entrees are gluten-free, and you can buy them as part of special GF kits.
Two of the GF entrees are potato-based, and two are rice based. The remaining two are the classic chili and white bean chili. These don’t contain any carbohydrates. I can’t imagine eating chili without some carbs! I’d stockpile some crackers or something similar to go with these.
Check Legacy’s gluten-free options
How Healthy Are They?
Primal Rating:
Legacy Food Storage is very clear about the nutrition of its products. It’s easy to find all the info on their website. This is somewhat surprising since the nutrition of meals is relatively poor.
Macronutrients (Carbohydrate, Proteins, Fat)
Ideally, you should consume a 4:2:1 ratio of carbs to proteins to fat (in grams). Legacy meals don’t come close to meeting this macronutrient ratio.
Most Legacy Food meals are 60% (or more) carbohydrates. These carbs are simple carbs like white rice or white pasta. There is also straight-up sugar in a lot of the meals.
There is an okay amount of protein per serving (around 11g). This protein probably comes from the whey found in many meals.
The fat content is very high because most meals are slathered in cheese or cream sauce. For example, the cheese and broccoli bake has 15g of fat per serving – of which 12g is saturated fat.
Sodium
LFS meals contain TONS of sodium.
For example, the classic chili has 1160mg of sodium per 360-calorie serving. The pasta primavera has the least sodium, but even this one is high at 710mg per serving.
The maximum recommended intake of sodium per day is 2,300mg. You would exceed this after eating just 2 or 3 servings of Legacy Food Storage meals!
Vitamins and Minerals
When it comes to minerals, Legacy Food Storage is okay. Some meals have a surprising amount of iron, calcium, and potassium.
However, don’t expect much in terms of vitamins. This isn’t surprising, considering that the meals have almost no vegetables.
Also note: If you care about nutrition content, you’ll be annoyed that the labels are inconsistent. For example, the stroganoff label lists potassium content, but the chili label does not.
Shelf Life
Primal Rating:
Here is where Legacy Food Storage shines. They have some of the best packaging in the industry.
All of their meals and foods are put in a sealed Mylar bag. The bags get oxygen absorbers and are nitrogen-flushed before sealing. This means the bags have essentially zero oxygen, allowing them to last for decades.
The sealed pouches are then put in buckets to protect them from physical damage (think hurricane debris or rodents). We love that the buckets are stackable and rectangular in shape. They take up less space than round buckets.
Also read:
There are about 4 servings per pouch. The pouches are resealable, so you can easily close them if you don’t want to eat everything at once.
Note that many other emergency food brands advertise a shelf life of up to 30 years despite only using oxygen absorbers (not also nitrogen flushing). Because Legacy’s packaging is better, I would trust their foods to last longer than these brands.
Cost and Value for Money
Primal Rating:
Legacy Food Storage meal kits are a pretty good value regarding the amount of food you get. They do have one of the lowest costs per pound, as claimed.
But, if we factor in the quality of the ingredients, the value isn’t so great.
Most of the meals are just cheap carbs like pasta. There is no meat and almost no vegetables in meals.
Even when you factor in the packaging, spending $10 for a pound of pasta and cheese powder isn’t exactly a good deal.
If you are on a budget and nutrition isn’t a priority, ReadyWise meal kits are a much better deal – and none of their meals require cooking.
Valley Food Storage is also a good budget option, and the nutrition profile is slightly better, though (like Legacy) most of their meals require cooking.
As for bulk freeze-dried ingredients, Legacy Food Storage is on par with the competition in terms of price.
Availability
Primal Rating:
Legacy Food Storage meals are available on their website and on Amazon. Most orders ship quickly. There is 100% free shipping on all orders.
Note that Legacy Food Storage has this disclaimer on their website:
*** Due to ingredient delays and supply shortages, contents of buckets may vary slightly from list below. Calorie counts per package will be similar to what is listed above ***
It would be annoying to get different meals than you thought you were buying! Because of this, we are deducting a star from the rating.
Customer Service and Incentives
Primal Rating:
LFS is generally very good. They have a toll-free number that you can call for assistance or questions.
While they don’t have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, Legacy will accept returns of unused items. You have to make the return within 30 days and cover the shipping cost.
Unfortunately, Legacy Food Storage doesn’t have a rewards or loyalty program. There are no incentives to continue buying from them.
Final Thoughts
Legacy Food Storage meal kits are okay if you want to prepare quickly. However, because of the poor nutrition, we wouldn’t want to live off of just these meals for an extended period!
We recommend adding some freeze-dried bulk items to the meals to improve nutrition. This can also make the cost-per-day cheaper, especially if you buy bulk ingredients on sale or from budget suppliers like Augason Farms.
Ensure you have an emergency stove and fuel stockpiled since Legacy meals require cooking.
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